


The Witch at Fifth and Main

by RileyC



Category: Original Work
Genre: Books, Censorship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4228728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Books are dangerous; that's where ideas come from...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Witch at Fifth and Main

They don’t hang witches anymore, or burn them at the stake. No, they have far more underhanded and vicious ways of going about it today.

There used to be a witch down at the corner of Fifth and Main, back when that was a bookshop. Now it’s just another chain retail outlet peddling high-priced pretensions. Once upon a time, though, there were dreams for sale down there, and magic was released every time someone stepped inside and jingled the bell hanging over the door.

Her name was Miss Harris—Joanna Harris, we found out later on—and she didn’t look like any witch in the old stories. Her face wasn’t green and she didn’t have any warts, and she rode a Schwinn ladies bike with a wicker basket instead of a broom. She did keep cats but so did half the folks in town, like old Mrs. Conroy who had near thirty of them and chased you off with a shovel if you stepped in her yard. Nobody ever tried to make out that Mrs. Conroy was any kind of evil influence, though.

So no, there wasn’t anything about Miss Harris to set her apart from everyone else, not to look at. She was even the right color. She didn’t go to church, though, and she didn’t have a husband to keep her in line, and like I said, she sold dreams.

You would walk in there with five dollars in your blue jeans, only wanting to buy a Superman comic or maybe an Archie, maybe get some candy too, but then you would get to talking with Miss Harris and next thing you knew you were on your way home with _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_ , an illustrated edition of _Treasure Island_ , _and_ your Superman and Archie and the candy. Years later on you would sit down and figure out how that didn’t exactly add up right, couldn’t, but it was all sensible at the time.

Books, she’d say, were the only real magic; the only dreams you could catch and hold in your hands. Books could take you everywhere and show you things that never were; books could fire you up and make you want to change the world. So long as you could read and you didn’t shut down your mind, she’d say with this fierce, proud look in her eyes, there was nothing you couldn’t be or do.

It didn’t stop with you buying the book, either. The next time she saw you, Miss Harris would ask if you’d finished the book and did you like it—and if you didn’t, she’d want to know why not. She’d ask how it made you feel and what it made you think, and if it sparked your imagination. Then she’d take you around to find some more books and off you’d go to learn about Nellie Bly or tag along with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, or learn about eldritch horrors and fog-shrouded Arkham.

Sometimes she didn’t even have to ask. Sometimes she just knew you needed a love story or something scary; a story that would have you in stitches of laughter, or one that would make you weep and never want to read another book again because no other story could ever be as good—until Miss Harris found you the perfect one again.

What Miss Harris didn’t take into account was that there are folks in this world who hate books every bit as much as Miss Harris loved them, and for all the same reasons. Folks who couldn’t stand to see you fritter away your time on stories that weren’t true and that filled your head with useless fairytales and wrong thoughts. The only book anyone ever needed to read, they’d say, was the _Good_ Book, and they’d smack their hands down on its cover like they wrote it themselves when the truth was most of them had never even read it. They couldn’t have, not and said the things they did about Miss Harris or anybody who wasn’t their kind and shouldn’t be allowed to have any influence on their children.

That’s when the book burnings started. Everyone in town who had ever got books from Miss Harris had to bring them down to the park and put them on the bonfire and watch the flames eat up every word and dream and idea. When Miss Harris tried to speak out against this, the whispers started; gossip like oil of vitriol. There she goes, the righteous folk would whisper, that woman putting unwholesome ideas in the children’s minds. Who knows what else she does when nobody can see. Never seen her go to church, sells all kinds of books about heathen religions and witchcraft, though. Wouldn’t put it past her go out in the woods and dance naked in the moonlight! And while their menfolk gave some thought to that, the ladies lowered their voices and whispered some more, about what else those kind of degenerate devil worshippers got up, how they’d murder babies and drink their blood and offer them up to Satan.

Like that, overnight, nobody went to the bookshop anymore and one day not long after there was a CLOSED, OUT OF BUSINESS sign on the door. When you’d put your face up to the glass window and frame it to keep out the glare as you peeked inside, all you’d see was a big empty space, nothing but empty shelves and racks where all those dreams used to be. Nobody saw Miss Harris leave town, she just wasn’t there anymore.

So no, they don’t hang witches anymore, or burn them at the stake. Narrow minds and nasty gossip get the job done nowadays.

Here’s the thing, though: magic and dreams and ideas are like that genie in a bottle. Once the stopper’s pulled out and it escapes, there’s no putting it back, not all of it. I think Miss Harris knew that. Maybe she was even okay with moving on, because she’d broken that bottle open here and knew it couldn’t all be burned out in a fire.

If she was a witch, maybe Miss Harris would even figure something like that would be worth getting hanged for.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this isn't a new fanfic, or a new chapter to a WIP. Soon, I hope. I'm in a weird writing place where things are actually going well--to a point. The closer something gets to being finished, however, the more it starts to slow down and drag. I have dubbed this post-a-fic-phobia, for lack of any other explanation, and am doing my best to overcome it.
> 
> This is a start.


End file.
